"Puts’ score, conducted with unfailing assurance by Nicholas Kok, is virile and punchy. It transcends the generic idioms of American opera and doesn’t sound like an unholy mix of Bernstein, Adams and Sondheim: instead it emulates the grander passions of Shostakovich, Poulenc and Janáček, as well as cooking up some skillful pastiche of Mozartian arias, Lutheran chorales and Highland bagpiping. The counterpoint of the three languages is brilliantly handled, rising at times to a thrilling cacophony – but there is delicacy too, as when a haunting harp arpeggio accompanies the monologue of a French officer recording the melancholy list of the day’s casualties as his thoughts wander to his pregnant wife back in Paris."